Award-winning journalist and multimedia producer Cecilia Vaisman, who brought the pressing issues of her native Latin America to the forefront of radio audiences in the United States through her passionate style of storytelling, died Sunday after a battle with breast cancer, according to her colleagues. She was 54.

Vaisman, who earned two Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards for reporting on the disadvantaged, among numerous other commendations, had her radio documentaries broadcast on WBEZ's "This American Life," National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" and "Latino USA," and other outlets.

"She was such a radio genius," said Alan Weisman, co-founder of Homelands Productions, an independent media cooperative. "She was not only a good reporter working for radio, but her work was very richly produced. It was like setting news to music with lots of sound interwoven. She was a master at that."

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and raised in northern New Jersey, Vaisman was the youngest of four children. She earned a degree in Latin American studies from Barnard College in New York City and later joined the staff of NPR in Washington as a producer in 1986.

In 1990 she co-founded Homeland Productions, where she covered a range of international issues that put a spotlight on the Americas and the Caribbean. Some of her projects included "Vanishing Homelands," about changes to land and people since the arrival of Christopher Columbus; "Life on the Edge of the Ozone Hole," on Chile's Magallanes province; and "Argentina's Guarani Indians," on an Indian tribe that was at one time South America's largest.

"She was a journalist whose work was really inspired by deep love for Latin America," said David Welna, a friend and former co-worker at NPR. "She had personal roots in it. ... She ended up covering something she cared and knew a lot about.

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"The kind of empathy she had with people, she could draw them in and persuade other people to open up and talk about themselves. She had an intensity you could feel. She really left a strong and favorable impression with everyone she came in contact with."

That included Chicago Tribune reporter Gary Marx, whom she'd been introduced to at a cocktail party in Rio de Janeiro where both were covering the Earth Summit.

"It took no nudging on our behalf for them to notice each other," Welna said. "She and Gary, that evening on, they were inseparable."

And reporting wasn't the only thing the two had in common. They also found out they shared June 12 as a birthday.

"It seemed like one more sign they were meant for each other," Welna said.

Vaisman and Marx married in 1995 and soon after started a family. The couple, along with their two children, Ana and Andres, lived in Havana for five years, during which Vaisman taught journalism and was a volunteer English instructor while Marx continued reporting for the Tribune.

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Their journey eventually led them back to Chicago, where Vaisman worked at Chicago Public Media, which runs WBEZ, as a project editor overseeing coverage of the Great Lakes region.

Vaisman remained active in international topics, even assisting a trio of reporters in producing their first radio feature on femicide in Juarez, Mexico. The piece, "La Cruz De Juarez," won multiple honors.

In recent years, Vaisman also worked as an associate professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

Outside work, Vaisman enjoyed music as a listener and as a performer. Among her favorites artists were Argentine singer Mercedes Sosa and jazz vocalist Billie Holiday. Vaisman also played the bass in a community symphony orchestra when she lived in Arizona in the 1990s.

"She was a terrific musician," Weisman said. "She could draw and paint. She did a lot of caricatures. It wasn't too much that woman couldn't do."

Over the summer, Vaisman took one final trip to her native Buenos Aires with her family.